The piece starts out with some stats, among them that there are around 3,000 sheets of glass, the heaviest of which weighs 7000 pounds. And it’s the glass that’s been one of the great challenges of the project …

[UPDATE: Cupertino mayor Barry Chang is refuting the claims made by The Guardian, saying that he never said the words quoted in the article: “I was shocked and dismayed to see a recent article quoting me with words I never used and describing situations that never happened,” he said in a statement on the Cupertino city website.]

Cupertino mayor Barry Chang has accused Apple of ‘abusing’ its home city by failing to contribute to much-needed public projects, and claims that he was ‘surrounded’ by security and escorted off the premises when he tried to discuss traffic congestion.

Apple is not willing to pay a dime. They’re making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they won’t. They abuse us.

However, the Guardian notes that Apple paid $9.2M in city taxes in 2012/13 …

Cook said that while much has changed, the culture–the fundamental goal of the company–remained the same.

Steve felt that if Apple could do that—make great products and great tools for people—they in turn would do great things. He felt strongly that this would be his contribution to the world at large. We still very much believe that. That’s still the core of this company.

The company has never tried to be first to market, he said, but rather to “have the patience to get it right” … expand full story

After Tim Cook recently claimed at an environmental conference that its new ‘Spaceship’ headquarters would be “the greenest building on the planet,” Apple today provided (via Business Insider) a few illustrative facts and figures to support the claim.

For example, Cupertino law requires that construction sites reuse at least 75% of their demolished materials. Apple says it’s using over 90% of the old headquarters in building the new one.

This includes recycling all of the concrete from its present headquarters to form part of the foundations of the new campus. Trees cleared from the construction site are being turned into lumber for use in the building.

Once completed, Apple says that not only will 100 percent of its energy come from renewable sources (Apple is building a large solar farm at the site), but that the unique design of the structure means it will require far less energy to run than a conventional building.

The new HQ will also save money on heating and cooling. Apple says the building will have natural ventilation for 75% of the year.

While these are just a few snippits, we’re likely to hear more as construction work progresses.

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt says that even at an international conference of 6,000 architects, he couldn’t find a single one who liked the spaceship design of Apple’s new campus building. Though if the single quote given is representative of the quality of the critiques, this may not be saying much.

“Does it have to be a spaceship?” asked an official at the American Institute of Architects.

Pixar president Ed Catmull wrote in his book Creativity Inc that they are failing to understand a key feature of the building, derived from a lesson Steve Jobs learned when leading the design of Pixar’s headquarters …

New aerial photos of the site of Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ campus now appear to show that demolition of the existing buildings is complete, with an army of construction vehicles at work preparing the ground for construction … expand full story